cocoa – ɔimoɈɒ

simply, how (most) computing should be

Alex Payne writes about his moderate stance on the iPad: Human-computer interaction has found a sweet spot on the iPad. It’s all the power of desktop computing, plus the valuable constraints of mobile devices, minus the limitations of both. It just makes sense. Use one for a couple hours and your desktop or laptop will … Continue reading “simply, how (most) computing should be”

Alex Payne writes about his moderate stance on the iPad:

Human-computer interaction has found a sweet spot on the iPad. It’s all the power of desktop computing, plus the valuable constraints of mobile devices, minus the limitations of both. It just makes sense. Use one for a couple hours and your desktop or laptop will seem clumsy, arbitrary, and bewildering. It is, simply, how (most) computing should be.
…
All in all, I stand by what I had to say back in January: that the iPad is a beautiful, important, transformative device released under a confusing regime of questionable ethics. That said, I think three simple changes would make a world of difference towards assuaging people’s concerns about the iPad and Apple’s direction.
…

Apple should not charge to put applications you’ve written onto your personal iPad (or iPhone, for that matter).

Apple should lift restrictions on running interpreted code on its mobile devices. Let people run Basic, Python, and Ruby interpreters on iPad and iPhone.

Apple should remove the concept of private APIs from its developer offerings.

In essence, I agree on all three points.

With respect to 1.: I agree that Apple should not charge for putting a build on your own iPad but I can understand why they do. They’re for the certificate and management of same. It’s a casual barrier to entry which most people serious about it can leap over.

But if they permitted interpreted code on the device, which is the essence of 2., then they’re halfway there. Allowing a PHP interpreter, a BASIC compiler or even an environment like MIT’s Scratch would go somewhere to assuraging some of the deep felt geek hurt. A lot of folk I know got their start programming either in BASIC or HyperCard.

Point 3 tells me that Alex doesn’t know how the Apple development environment works. Private APIs are not necessarily secret ways of doing things which cannot be accessed by other mortals due to their secrecy though it does seem to be that way. Private APIs are APIs which are eventually to be made public once they have stabilised or been sufficiently modified. They are commonly APIs which are new or in development. I say ‘commonly’ because Mail and iCal on Mac OS X use them. Even now.

XCake Belfast November

XCake, the local developer group for folk who use XCode had an interesting meeting last night. It was held in the very impressive University of Ulster Belfast campus and was catered for with cake and traybakes by Digital Circle. The first presentation lasted about an hour and detailed the developments in the OneAPI, a GSMA … Continue reading “XCake Belfast November”

The first presentation lasted about an hour and detailed the developments in the OneAPI, a GSMA Reference model for interoperability of network services for telecommunications operators. That’s the long way of saying it’s an easy way for developers to get access to call control, SMS and location services from cell networks. We had three clever folk (Seamus, Richard and Michael) from Aepona who very ably demonstrated the services and answered developer questions. More usefully, however, they were asking the developers about their opinions regarding the use of SOAP and JSON. This is all above me – but it was entertaining to hear the opinions (which were essentially: making XML for SOAP isn’t an issue for most developers but JSON is lighter and simpler).

After that we had a short discussion about our future meeting with Translink, the developments we’ve had with accessing their data and the renewed enthusiasm considering that the Ordnance Survey in Great Britain is opening up it’s 1:10000 map dataset to the public. I hope you’ll join me in encouraging the Ordnance Survey in Northern Ireland to do the same. For what it’s worth, we also have our baleful eye cast in the direction of the Postcodes held by the Royal Mail. At the end of the day if there was government money (our taxes) used to pay for datasets, then I’m determined not to pay for them again.

And we finished with a discussion of future events:

An Intro to InterfaceBuilder
NimbleKit, PhoneGap and Titanium: do they do what they say or is it all bollocks?
Developing for iPhone without InterfaceBuilder
Unit Testing for iPhone

We’re kinda unaware of other developer-related events in Belfast but we did mention that Monday night is Demo Night at MobileMondayBelfast.

iPhoneAppsIreland Dublin training course

From Vinny Coyne, loyal member of XCake, an announcement of his new iPhone Course: Just a quick announcement that I will be teaching a beginners course in iPhone Development in Newlands Cross, Dublin from 21st to 25th September inclusive. We are also running a competition for two places in the course. The course will be … Continue reading “iPhoneAppsIreland Dublin training course”

From Vinny Coyne, loyal member of XCake, an announcement of his new iPhone Course:

Just a quick announcement that I will be teaching a beginners course in iPhone Development in Newlands Cross, Dublin from 21st to 25th September inclusive. We are also running a competition for two places in the course.

The course will be a healthy mix of theory and lab coding exercises. I’ll be going into the fundamentals of Objective-C and the iPhone SDK, as well as a peek at some of the more complex aspects of iPhone apps.

By the end of the course, candidates will be able to create their own iPhone apps which make the most of the platform’s features (such as location-based services, Google Maps integration, accelerometer functions, web-connectivity, etc) and sell them on the Apple App Store to millions of iPhone & iPod touch users.

Candidates should have experience with at least one object-oriented programming language before attending. Also, an Intel-based MacBook with the iPhone SDK installed will be required. MacBooks can also be rented for the week for an additional fee.

For more information, see iPhone Apps Ireland or download the PDF brochure here.

We’re also running a competition to give away two places at the course for two people currently unemployed.

I’ve also been speaking to Vinny about the need for an iPhone course in Belfast. Who’s up for attending that?

Pre-WWDC Meetup, Wednesday 27th May, 4 pm

Jeff LaMarche writes a long article on how to survive and indeed thrive at WWDC. My earlier WWDC First Timer’s Guide posting was so positively received that I’ve decided to re-post it now that we’re only a few weeks out from the conference. I’ve also made some corrections and additions based on comments and feedback … Continue reading “Pre-WWDC Meetup, Wednesday 27th May, 4 pm”

Jeff LaMarche writes a long article on how to survive and indeed thrive at WWDC.

My earlier WWDC First Timer’s Guide posting was so positively received that I’ve decided to re-post it now that we’re only a few weeks out from the conference. I’ve also made some corrections and additions based on comments and feedback I got. This posting really has been a community effort, so please feel free to ping me if you think there are additions or changes that should be made.

WWDC is Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference and runs from the 8th June to the 12th June.

In June this year, we’re bringing 30 Northern Irish developers to WWDC and having a Pre-WWDC meet-up of attendees in The President’s Club, Talbot Street, Belfast at 4 pm on Wednesday 27th May. If you’re attending WWDC and want to meet up to talk to experienced developers (some of whom are experienced at WWDC as well), then come along, attend a brief presentation and network with other folk who are travelling to San Francisco.

The Cocoa Cooking Class

This came out of two ideas I had. The first was Code4Pizza – the idea that people, in order to learn, would be willing to spend their time coding for open source projects. I still think this idea is a winner for getting younger folk involved but as an evening class, it fills in many … Continue reading “The Cocoa Cooking Class”

This came out of two ideas I had.

The first was Code4Pizza – the idea that people, in order to learn, would be willing to spend their time coding for open source projects. I still think this idea is a winner for getting younger folk involved but as an evening class, it fills in many gaps present in the current market for young and really smart folk who want to use computers for more than FaceBook and MySpace.

The second was Tuesday Night Cocoa – something the lads up at Mac-Sys were doing – on a Tuesday evening when the Enterprise Park was open late, they would gang together and learn Cocoa from the books, helping each other through tough problems.

So, the Cocoa Cooking Class was born.

First off, I’m not even sure if Tuesday night is the best sort of time for something like this but it’s catchy, sosumi.

The Background:
Due to my organising of DevDays and generally being loud about the iPhone, I’m inundated with people wanting to learn how to do stuff on the iPhone. How to write applications and generally take part in the gold rush that is the iPhone. I’m working my way through the books but as my time is ‘expensive’ (in so far as as it’s really bloody hard to find ‘free’ time), I’m thinking I need to formalise something in this respect. My idea is that an experienced developer guides a workgroup on a weekly or biweekly basis through an application specification, design and build. The workgroup then owns that app and can do whatever they want with it. I’ve spoken to an experienced developer about it and he’s on board, details yet to be discussed. It’s unreasonable to expect him to dedicate this time for free so we have to take that into account and allow for him to help people ‘online’ in a forum or via email. Holding it on a Tuesday night might make sense but the idea is to get someone who knows what they’re talking about to come in and spend time instructing people and get paid to do it. If it’s not worth the money then we stop paying them and we hack it together on our own time. We even have the option of varying our instructors.

The Pitch:
Take one room with enough seating for 11 people.
Fill with 10 or so eager would-be application developers. Do not over-fill.
Add in one seasoned instructor. Mix for twenty minutes.
Establish base level of capability and break the people into 3-5 groups.
Distribute skills liberally through the groups to attempt to maintain consistency.
Start to build projects, one for each group for 90 minutes.
Break for 15 minutes to check consistency and share experiences.
Return to the room and continue to build knowledge for a further hour.
Stop activity and get each workgroup to show and tell for 5 minutes each.
Rinse and repeat weekly or bi-weekly.

To cover costs, everyone hands the instructor a Â£20 note. This covers room hire, instructor time and during the week support. That’s a reasonable night out.

Reasoning:
It’s my belief that this will create multiple opportunities for Mac and iPhone developers in the province. It will provide a collaborative approach to building applications with some real potential for IP creation and future revenue generation. Mix this with XCake and other initatives and we’ve got something to talk about. Would be even better if we could get some sort of funding for it (or even just a free room somewhere for the evenings).

What do you think?

WWDC Sold Out

Six weeks before the conference started and about the same time since the tickets went on sale. There are more than 30 folk heading out to WWDC from Northern Ireland in June. Related posts: Plus Ã§a change $10000 to call BillG out. Pre-WWDC Meetup, Wednesday 27th May, 4 pm WWDC anxiety and other thoughts on … Continue reading “WWDC Sold Out”

Six weeks before the conference started and about the same time since the tickets went on sale.

There are more than 30 folk heading out to WWDC from Northern Ireland in June.

GamesIndustry.biz poll

GamesIndustry.biz have the results of a poll on the 2009 tech people can not wait for. Over 300 industry professionals in the GamesIndustry.biz Network were polled to gauge interest on new technology, with the Wii MotionPlus, iPhone, Nintendo’s DSi and the continued evolution of the New Xbox Experience also piquing interest. 3D TV/Gaming Wii MotionPlus … Continue reading “GamesIndustry.biz poll”

GamesIndustry.biz have the results of a poll on the 2009 tech people can not wait for. Over 300 industry professionals in the GamesIndustry.biz Network were polled to gauge interest on new technology, with the Wii MotionPlus, iPhone, Nintendo’s DSi and the continued evolution of the New Xbox Experience also piquing interest.

3D TV/Gaming
Wii MotionPlus
iPhone
DSi
New Xbox Experience
PlayStation 3
New Wii peripheral
Android
DX11
- 10 New PlayStation 3 controller
- Digital distribution
- id’s Tech 5

Who would have thought that an Apple device would be in the top 10 of any games industry list never mind ahead of luminaries such as the PS3, the DSi and anything from id Software.

If that’s not reason to consider the iPhone a major platform for the next 18 months, then you’re got some pretty major biases there (hey, yes, I have biases, and reasons for them).

XCake 1st Meetup

After several months of talking about it, we’ve had our first XCake meetup. We had 20 people turn up, all told. They ranged from the education sector (Belfast Met, The University of Ulster and Queen’s University of Belfast) to the private sector (sole traders, bedroom developers, partnerships and limited companies) including some companies which have … Continue reading “XCake 1st Meetup”

After several months of talking about it, we’ve had our first XCake meetup.

We had 20 people turn up, all told. They ranged from the education sector (Belfast Met, The University of Ulster and Queen’s University of Belfast) to the private sector (sole traders, bedroom developers, partnerships and limited companies) including some companies which have a distinguished history of software development.

Philip Orr’s Home of Serendipity has another XCake writeup.

It’s to be followed next Tuesday (24th) by an XCake meetup in Dublin.

XCake iPhone meetups in Belfast and Dublin [updated]

Mentioned earlier but now gathering a little steam. These meetups are mostly informal and designed to help build a little community around what we have here on the island. XCAKE BELFAST: Thursday 19th Feb, 6 pm. Roast, Lisburn Road, Belfast. I’ve confirmed they have WiFi and will be happy to have a cluster of seats … Continue reading “XCake iPhone meetups in Belfast and Dublin [updated]”

Mentioned earlier but now gathering a little steam. These meetups are mostly informal and designed to help build a little community around what we have here on the island.

XCAKE BELFAST: Thursday 19th Feb, 6 pm. Roast, Lisburn Road, Belfast.
I’ve confirmed they have WiFi and will be happy to have a cluster of seats taken up by coffee-swilling nerds. I’ve been told of ten people who have expressed interest in going to this – let’s make it busy and kick-ass.

XCAKE DUBLIN: Tuesday 24th February, 7 pm. Radisson SAS Royal Hotel, Dublin.
This is only an hour after the BizSpark Innovation Accelerator being held by the DigitalMediaForum and in the same hotel so people interested in both might be interested in attending both. There’s folk coming all the way from Belfast and Kerry coming to this so you should consider it too.

Tuesday Night Cocoa

Tonight was the Tuesday Night Cocoa group meet. Half a dozen hairy blokes sitting in the Mac-Sys Ltd offices with instructional PDFs up on a projector and open books in front of them. I’m very keen on this – this is a small cadre of fellahs, some of whom work in Mac-Sys and some of whom don’t, taking the time of an evening to fix issues with their coding projects and leaving with homework which they’ll work on during the week. To a degree I’m envious but I’mr eally glad I was able to help them get this started.

None of the guys there had any coding experience and yet they’re tackling the iPhone SDK in their spare time. They’ve buzzed me a couple of times in the last week or so with compile errors which they couldn’t debug (simply due to their lack of experience) but tonight they didn’t need to ask once – the previous nights and afternoons they have put into this have started to pay off.

It’s a great example of grassroots doing it for themselves – this is what I love about the current industry – people doing it without asking permission – whether they’re running a code class for the iPhone, running a coffee meetup for tech-heads just because they’re in the right place and the right time or knocking brains together to create a mashup of two useful services – it’s great.

Kudos to them and I can’t wait to see what they’re working on next.